He had to find a certain particularly described cedar tree, thence
make his way south to a low cliff, at one extreme of which he should
find a rock cairn with a squared post in its center. From that he
could run his boundary lines with a pocket compass, until he located
the three remaining corners.
Hollister found cedars enough, but none that pointed the way to a low
cliff and a rock cairn. He ranged here and there, and at last went up
the hillside which rose here so steeply as to be stiff climbing. It
bore here and there a massive tree, rough-barked pillars rising to a
branchy head two hundred feet in the air. But for the most part the
slope was clothed with scrubby hemlock and thickets of young fir and
patches of hazel, out of which he stirred a great many grouse and once
a deer.
But if he found no stakes to show him the boundaries of his property,
he gained the upper rim of the high cliff which walled the southern
side of the Big Bend, and all the valley opened before him. Smoke
lifted in a pale spiral from the house below his camp.
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